Tuesday, 9 February 2010

Not my Spanish!

These figures are part of a Spanish contingent painted by Nick Speller for our Zama game.  He's also painting a good proportion of the veterans.  Nick's a top chap who paints a lot of minis for me. 

 
Spanish foot
 
 
Celtiberian Foot
 

Spanish Cavalry

Spanish light cavalry

Nick has painted Masinissa's bodyguard for me; I'm very much looking forward to seeing them!

Sunday, 7 February 2010

Renegade Velites

 
Here are 32 Renegade Republican Roman velites.  I've had them for a year or two; they were going cheap on eBay, and I couldn't resist a bargain.  However it turns out they do need considerable TLC.  Most of the shields fell off, because they have been glued on after painting; don't you just hate that?  

I'm painting them as "insurance" for Zama, in case Keith or Craig can't get quite enough Aventine velites painted in time.  I've given some red tunics so they will better match Keith's and Craig's minis.  They will look OK, when finished, in about a week's time I hope.

Saturday, 6 February 2010

Elephants- Before and After

I've finished two more dead elephants, displayed here next to their live equivalents.  All the elephants are Gripping Beast resin; tidy little models.  I must say these are very nice products; very nicely sculpted; I wonder whether GB designed them for their own Zama project?  I picked up the two dead models at the Salute B&B for a fiver. the pair.  Bargain! 

 
 I've tried to make the dead elephants match live ones I painted two or three years back.

 
Transfers are LBMS, arrows are made from broom bristle.  I can make and fit an arrow inside two minutes!  Expect to see many more...

 
I tried to make the two models just a little different from each other, by adjusting the trunk position and adding a wounded crewman to the left-hand one.  I did a bit of retouching on the two live elephants I completed earlier.

4 dead nellies down; 2 to go!

Thursday, 4 February 2010

Not my Romans!

I'll have nothing to show for a few days, so I thought I'd show some pictures from one of the collaborators on the Zama Project.  These are all Aventine minis being painted by Craig Davey, who has given me permission to post these photos.  He is clearly an exceptional painter!  He's almost finished his Allied legion, and has a second Roman legion to go...

 
Allied Legion Hastati and Principes

  

  
Allied Legion Triarii


Allied Legion Cavalry

  
 Command Stand

 
Velites Work in Progress

I'm very much looking forward to meeting Craig, and also Keith and Adam from Aventine, shortly before the Bletchley game in April.

Tuesday, 2 February 2010

Nuclear Family

In line with the current trend towards wargaming-related cartoons (congrats again Iron Mitten), I'd thought I'd post a Birthday card that my middle son created for his mum.  This shows the BigRedBat clan in typical domestic mode, clustered around our antiquated Panasonic TV.   


The artist has depicted himself, bottom left, then smallest Bat, Mrs Bat, the eponymous Bat at his painting table, with painting light, and eldest Batson hunched over his laptop.

He knocked this up on a graphics tablet; I think he did rather well!

nb Buy hair tonic; start diet!

Monday, 1 February 2010

More Celtic Reinforcements

I treated myself to a day off "Zama" and based these figures which were painted for me by chum Nick Speller around 6 months ago.

 

They are the third "open order" warband he has painted for me.  Most of my other celts are based 8 to a 6x6 base; these chaps are in 6's, have slightly smaller shields and are predoninately armed with javelins.  In C&C(A) I think of these as "Auxilia", with the others being "Warband". 

Figures are a mix of Black Tree, Renegade and Miniature Design Studios.

Friday, 29 January 2010

Zama- Tentative Deployment Plan

I worked with Ian last night on the deployment for the game, revisiting the deployment we tried out last year, and making a few minor tweaks to it.  The game will be played with (slightly adapted) Command and Colours boardgame rules.  We used single C&C blocks to work out exactly where the units will be positioned (each block represents 8-16 miniatures, or roughly 400 to 1000 real men).

 
Roman Left (above): the player will command the left flank cavalry and the left Allied Roman legion.  His Carthaginian opponent will have a relatively small and somewhat outnumbered command!


Roman Centre (above): The Romans are deployed, behind a screen of velites, with gaps between the maniples to counter the Carthaginian elephants.  The Roman centre player will command the other 3 legions.  The Carthaginians are in three lines (mercenaries, levy, veterans) behind a screen of elephants.  Pencils show where the section boundaries will be.

 
Roman Right (above):  The Roman right player will command Masinissa's Numidian infantry and cavalry.  Again, they heavily outnumber their Carthaginian/Numidian opponent.

We have also tentatively agreed a small number of special rules that, we hope, will recreate the poor performance of the Carthaginian elephants and levy on the day (I'll publish these later).  What we need to do next, is to playtest the scenario two or three times  to make sure it is balanced....

One small by-product of the planning is that we added a few more units of Carthaginian light troops, taking the total number of minis past 1400!  At the same time, we reduced the number of elephants to 10, which will save me a fair bit of painting time.  The width of the board remains unchanged at 16 feet.